SARAH STARR
SPIRITUAL AUTHOR
Sarah Starr
Sarah Starr was born in London and has since lived throughout the UK and Australia. After careers in nursing and hospitality she became a complementary therapist and spiritual healer, still working in this field today.
She is married with two step-children and lives in Sussex with her husband.
Her interests include an allotment, beekeeping, baking, knitting and art-work.
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Why write anyway?
To sit down and write a book is not always down to cold choice but rather a compulsion or urge that generates from within. Sometimes on a soul level, one is required to follow this need to get an idea onto paper. So it was for my story.
A quiet child, I reached my tenth year in 1968. Until this time stories had been read out in class while I shared a book with my classmate. I was slow to read and write but nobody knew why. At eight years of age I struggled to read anything more complicated than the ‘Janet and John’ books on the classroom shelf. My mother was so worried she sent away for a clever device called a ‘Sterio’ from America.
It stood on the dining table like a small easel and had a pair of glasses fitted to the front. The idea was you put your head up to the glasses and looked through them onto a board where pictures could be traced from a mirror box. Repeated exercises helped, but my reading and writing really took off through reading comics, especially the ‘Dandy’ and the ‘Beano’.
At ten I was sent to a different school which had a bookcase in the classroom. The first book I picked out was an abridged edition of Great Expectations by Charles Dickens. The words flew out from the page as I read the first chapter in a blur of fear and excitement. After this I read the abridged version of Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte. The suspense was overwhelming! Sucked into the pages I only had to look up to know I was in the safety of the classroom. I was hooked! And I knew then I wanted to write.
During my teenage years I scored my best marks in English, but I found study difficult. It was supposed I had Dyslexia but this was never diagnosed, so I continued to struggle with my studies. I trained to become a nurse and worked for the NHS for 7 years. In my late 20’s I moved to Australia but returned to England 4 years later. A further 6 years later finally I was able to work part-time. This created space I could use for writing, but I wanted to write a novel. I was out of practice, slow and awkward. I didn’t have a plot, but knew I wanted to write about Australia. I attended a writers group for a few terms which helped my low confidence. And bit by bit I let the story evolve. It came from within, took many years and needed countless changes, but I loved every minute of its creation. That story is Dream Time.